RocketStar Wants To Make Going To Space a One-Step Process

RocketStar Space has its sights set on "single stage to orbit"—building a rocket that can leave the planet without requiring multiple stages. That's one of the big goals of rocketry that could make reaching space cheaper and more accessible for everybody, but so far, no one has been able to do it.

Every successful rocket launch you've ever seen that has sent a payload to orbit or beyond has used multi-stage rockets. The first stage has powerful engines to lift the rocket out of the steepest parts of the Earth's gravity well before it separates and a second stage kicks in. Some flights use a third or fourth stage, depending on the payload. In single stage to orbit, there's just the one rocket. While suborbital flights have gone up on single-stage rockets, none have been able to reach orbit.

"The ultimate goal is that anybody who has a credit card can put a Cubesat in orbit."

In the below video, you can see RocketStar's first step. This test uses the engine for a five-foot aerospike engine sounding rocket, designed to go about 10,000 feet up, launching out of Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39. The development of that 3D-printed engine was partially funded by Kickstarter. It's leading the way for an 18-foot rocket that will launch nine-and-a-half miles into the stratosphere. RocketStar's final goal is a 90-foot rocket that will take a CubeSat up into orbit and deploy it before the rocket comes back down.

"The ultimate goal is that anybody who has a credit card can put a Cubesat in orbit," RocketStar founder and CEO Christopher Craddock said in a phone call. "This'll really open the doors wide, and it'll effectively create a cellphone market where you have anybody putting up a small amount of tech, they can have their own cloud communications satellite, their own GPS satellite."

After graduating from SUNY Stony Brook in 2000, Craddock began looking for a way to enter the burgeoning private space industry. He began to look toward the X-33, an experimental attempt to create single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. Part of that inspired the aerospike engine, a concept that involves a single engine able to handle thrust at a variety of altitudes.

"I was trying to find a way to enter the rocket market to ultimately mine asteroids, and I figured out the biggest problem wasn't the tech or the rockets, but getting to space," he says.

The full-size 90-foot rocket would be about the size of a Minotaur IV, a satellite-launching rocket built by Orbital ATK. Each of the test flights building up to that will test the abilities of the engine to vary its thrust. The idea is use more fuel on the ground to launch, then slowly taper off on the rocket's way up through the parabolic arc. Once in space, a faring will release the small satellite cargo, then use a small bit of thrust from leftover fuel to burn itself up in the atmosphere over the ocean. If they achieve that, it's on to the next step: reusability.

"I want to get a minimum viable product out there, a big dumb rocket that'll just drop into the ocean and we'll fish it out," Craddock says. "But eventually I want to do a vertical landing."

It's small steps for now. The sounding rocket will launch sometime in the next few months (the date is still being worked out with NASA), and will provide an in-air demonstration of the aerospike rocket. Once it reaches its ceiling of 10,000 feet, it will break apart into four pieces and return to the ground safely via drogue parachute.

The goal, still a few years away, is to be able to launch single-stage-to-orbit flights with a turnaround of six days for customers, and to drive down the cost of cargo launching from $85,000 per kilogram to $6,000, and then to an affordable range for consumers.

But that's all the future. Right now, it has to do one thing an aerospike engine has never done in an aerial demonstration.

"We just want to get over the speed of sound," Craddock says.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. You may be able to find more information on their web site.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Popular Mechanics participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.